Effective Language Learning: Techniques and Strategies, Exams of English Literature

Download Effective Language Learning: Techniques and Strategies and more Exams English Literature in PDF only on Docsity! DOCUMENT RESUME ED 026 918 FL 001 165 By-Walsh, Donald D. Advice to the Language Learner. Hawaii Univ., Honolulu. Coll. of Education. Pub Date Dec 66 Note- 4p. Available from-Materials Center, Modern Language Association, 62 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10011 (25 for $1.00). Journal Cit-The Hawaii Language Teacher; v8 n1 p10-13 December 1966 EDRS Price MF-$0.25 HC-$0.30 Descriptors-Child Language, *Language Skills, *Learning Experience, Memorizing, *Modern Languages, Pattern Drills (Language), Reading Materialt, *Second Language Learning, *Skill Development, Structural Analysis, Study Skills This essay is addressed to the language student rather than the teacher. Second language learning and its component skills are explained briefly. Techniques of imitation, analogy, analysis, practice, and memori±ation are described, and speaking reading, and writing skills are discussed. Suggestions are made for improving reading ability in foreign languages. (DS) ;.;417:74;71044... t U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED f ROM THE OFFICE OF EDUCATION PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT. POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY. (The following article is of interest to teachers and-pupils alike.) tp..42,c1A,,, ool.s, no. I -bete....,m62-1 I (4, Co. ADVICE TO THE LANGUAGE LEARNER* About 3500 languages are spoken in the world today, and more than 140 of them have over a million speakers each. Since the United States is involved in some way with almost every other country, members of your generation will need to learn all the major languages and even some of the minor ones. The trouble is that no one can predict today which of these many languages you will need to know ten or twenty years from now. Maybe some day you will have to learn a language that you have not even heard of yet. Your present foreign-language course therefore serves a double purpose, teaching you the language you are now studying and also teaching you tech- niques of foreign-language study so that you can apply them to later study of other languages. Learning your own language. All over the world children learn to understand and speak their own language before they go to school. They acquire this wonderful skill by constant practice, by listening and talking all the time to themselves, to their family and friends. At first the child only repeats words and phrases that he has heard and learned. But, he finds that he has to put new sentences together to get what he wants. He tries the new sentences out on people. They accept some of his sentences but reject others because they are funny or because they don't make sense. The child keeps on trying until he works out a system for producing acceptable, understandable sentences. He assembles in his mind a simple model of the language, his own grammar of his language. Languages are different. The new language you are learning will be easier if you do not expect it to behave like English. It will have different sounds, and its words will have differentkinds of meaning fitted together in un-English ways. Even though every living language has been learned by every child who speaks it, you will not find it childs play to learn this new language. Learning it will require a lot of hard work, but any intelligent student can accomplish it, especially with a good teacher and a good textbook. itammand writink In all languages writing has always followed speech, often by many thousands of years. Most of the languages of the world have not yet been put into written form by their speakers. Most writing systems are just ways of putting on paper what someone has said, either aloud or to himself. For example, in all the written languages of Western Europe use the Roman alphabet, but each one uses these letters to represent its own sounds. When you study the written form of any ri of these languages you will have to learn to overcome the interference from English, which will tempt you to pronounce letters in another language as they are pronounced A in English. They almost never are. 4) U. *This statement grew out of a conference on the application of linguistics to language learning held at the offices of the Modern Language Association in 1964. It was printed in tentative form in the 1965 Directory issue of PMLA. It was then revised in the light of comments from many teachers and linguists. - Donald D. Walsh - 10- n .